Asia Institute - Theses
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ItemOverseas Chinese Communities in Transition: Capable Agency, Translocal Positioning, and Community Re-organisation( 2019)The rapid growth of China-born immigrants around the world has attracted intense attention from researchers, the public, and policymakers. However, much understanding of this population is clouded by speculation and misinformation, thus resulting in heated debates and even social anxieties. This research seeks to inform these debates concerning overseas Chinese communities by presenting an empirical case study conducted in Victoria, Australia. It argues that the significant influx of China-born immigrants since the late 1980s and early 1990s has seen an ongoing community reorganising process. Although this process has been influenced by convoluted forces at macro-, meso-, and micro-levels, the thesis demonstrates that it is more endogenous than exogenous. In other words, the process is fundamentally driven by Chinese immigrants who have strong inclinations and capabilities to self-organise for personal advancement and collective betterment. This research is grounded in offline and online ethnographic fieldwork spanning over three years. It is also informed by Chinese and Australian government reports, Australian national censuses, archival resources generated by the local Chinese community, as well as historical and cross-sectional comparisons. The five discussion chapters of this thesis identify and elaborate on the following key manifestations of the reorganising process respectively: a parallel rise of (1) homeland-engaging (transnational) and (2) hostland-embedding (local) activism, (3) heightened community engagement activism, (4) a feminisation turn, and (5) a redrawn organisational landscape. Addressed in this thesis is an under-researched and under-theorised topic central to the study of Chinese Overseas. This research also problematises state-centric analysis and demonstrates how a community-focused perspective can effectively illustrate and account for the dynamism and mechanism of immigrant community development. The co-evolutionary model developed in this research has proved constructive to unpack these convoluted and dynamic processes. In addition, this perspective also sheds light on the lived experiences of transnational mobility, the promises and pitfalls of accelerated transnational migration, and changes unleashed by accelerating globalisation. In so doing, it offers new avenues to studies on international migration and globalisation.